Nuova Voltiana

Nuova Voltiana PDF Author: Fabio Bevilacqua
Publisher: Hoepli
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Nuova Voltiana

Nuova Voltiana PDF Author: Fabio Bevilacqua
Publisher: Hoepli
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description


Volta

Volta PDF Author: Giuliano Pancaldi
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691188610
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Giuliano Pancaldi sets us within the cosmopolitan cultures of Enlightenment Europe to tell the story of Alessandro Volta--the brilliant man whose name is forever attached to electromotive force. Providing fascinating details, many previously unknown, Pancaldi depicts Volta as an inventor who used his international network of acquaintances to further his quest to harness the power of electricity. This is the story of a man who sought recognition as a natural philosopher and ended up with an invention that would make an everyday marvel of electric lighting. Examining the social and scientific contexts in which Volta operated--as well as Europe's reception of his most famous invention--Volta also offers a sustained inquiry into long-term features of science and technology as they developed in the early age of electricity. Pancaldi considers the voltaic cell, or battery, as a case study of Enlightenment notions and their consequences, consequences that would include the emergence of the "scientist" at the expense of the "natural philosopher." Throughout, Pancaldi highlights the complex intellectual, technological, and social ferment that ultimately led to our industrial societies. In so doing, he suggests that today's supporters and critics of Enlightenment values underestimate the diversity and contingency inherent in science and technology--and may be at odds needlessly. Both an absorbing biography and a study of scientific and technological creativity, this book offers new insights into the legacies of the Enlightenment while telling the remarkable story of the now-ubiquitous battery.

The European Edisons

The European Edisons PDF Author: Anand Kumar Sethi
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137492228
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
This book explores the lives, inventions, discoveries, and significant work of three extraordinary European inventors with noteworthy links to the great Thomas Alva Edison – Alessandro Volta, Nikola Tesla, and Eric Tigerstedt. It explores the business and scientific legacies that these men have contributed to the modern world. Despite prejudices, ill health, financial stringency, geopolitical situations, business rivalries, and in many cases just awful luck, they remained determined to deliver extraordinary scientific and technological developments to a skeptical and unappreciative world. This book is a testament to anyone pursuing their technological dreams for the benefit of society, and will enhance the literature for scholars, researchers, and the well-informed reader with an interest in science, technology, and the personalities involved in history.

Progressive Enlightenment

Progressive Enlightenment PDF Author: Leslie Tomory
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262016753
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
An argument that the gas industry was the first integrated large-scale technological network and that it signaled a new wave of industrial innovation. In Progressive Enlightenment, Leslie Tomory examines the origins of the gaslight industry, from invention to consolidation as a large integrated urban network. Tomory argues that gas was the first integrated large-scale technological network, a designation usually given to the railways. He shows how the first gas network was constructed and stabilized through the introduction of new management structures, the use of technical controls, and the application of means to constrain the behavior of the users of gas lighting. Tomory begins by describing the contributions of pneumatic chemistry and industrial distillation to the development of gas lighting, then explores the bifurcation between the Continental and British traditions in distillation technology. He examines the establishment and consolidation of the new industry by the Birmingham firm Boulton & Watt, and describes the deployment of the network strategy by the entrepreneur Frederick Winsor. Tomory argues that the gas industry represented a new wave of technological innovation in industry because of its dependence on formal scientific research, its need for large amounts of capital, and its reliance on business organization beyond small firms and partnerships--all of which signaled a departure from the artisanal nature and limited deployment of inventions earlier in the Industrial Revolution. Gas lighting was the first important realization of the Enlightenment dream of science in the service of industry.

The Siblys of London

The Siblys of London PDF Author: Susan Mitchell Sommers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190687320
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Ebenezer Sibly was a quack doctor, plagiarist, and masonic ritualist in late eighteenth-century London; his brother Manoah was a respectable accountant and pastor who ministered to his congregation without pay for fifty years. Drawing on such sources as ratebooks and pollbooks, personal letters and published sermons, burial registers and horoscopes, Susan Sommers has woven together an engaging microhistory that offers useful revisions to existing scholarly accounts of brothers Ebenezer and Manoah, while locating the entire Sibly family in the esoteric byways of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Is Water H2O?

Is Water H2O? PDF Author: Hasok Chang
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940073932X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
This book exhibits deep philosophical quandaries and intricacies of the historical development of science lying behind a simple and fundamental item of common sense in modern science, namely the composition of water as H2O. Three main phases of development are critically re-examined, covering the historical period from the 1760s to the 1860s: the Chemical Revolution (through which water first became recognized as a compound, not an element), early electrochemistry (by which water’s compound nature was confirmed), and early atomic chemistry (in which water started out as HO and became H2O). In each case, the author concludes that the empirical evidence available at the time was not decisive in settling the central debates and therefore the consensus that was reached was unjustified or at least premature. This leads to a significant re-examination of the realism question in the philosophy of science and a unique new advocacy for pluralism in science. Each chapter contains three layers, allowing readers to follow various parts of the book at their chosen level of depth and detail. The second major study in "complementary science", this book offers a rare combination of philosophy, history and science in a bid to improve scientific knowledge through history and philosophy of science.

The Bloomsbury Companion to Hegel

The Bloomsbury Companion to Hegel PDF Author: Allegra de Laurentiis
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441195122
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
A comprehensive reference guide to the key themes, major writings, context and influence of Hegel, one of the most important figures in 19th Century thought.

Experimenting at the Boundaries of Life

Experimenting at the Boundaries of Life PDF Author: Joan Steigerwald
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822986620
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
Attempts to distinguish a science of life at the turn of the nineteenth century faced a number of challenges. A central difficulty was clearly demarcating the living from the nonliving experimentally and conceptually. The more closely the boundaries between organic and inorganic phenomena were examined, the more they expanded and thwarted any clear delineation. Experimenting at the Boundaries of Life traces the debates surrounding the first articulations of a science of life in a variety of texts and practices centered on German contexts. Joan Steigerwald examines the experiments on the processes of organic vitality, such as excitability and generation, undertaken across the fields of natural history, physiology, physics and chemistry. She highlights the sophisticated reflections on the problem of experimenting on living beings by investigators, and relates these epistemic concerns directly to the philosophies of nature of Kant and Schelling. Her book skillfully ties these epistemic reflections to arguments by the Romantic writers Novalis and Goethe for the aesthetic aspects of inquiries into the living world and the figurative languages in which understandings of nature were expressed.

The Philosophical Breakfast Club

The Philosophical Breakfast Club PDF Author: Laura J. Snyder
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767930495
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
“[A] fascinating book...about the way four geniuses at Cambridge University revolutionized modern science.“ —Newsweek The Philosophical Breakfast Club recounts the life and work of four men who met as students at Cambridge University: Charles Babbage, John Herschel, William Whewell, and Richard Jones. Recognizing that they shared a love of science (as well as good food and drink) they began to meet on Sunday mornings to talk about the state of science in Britain and the world at large. Inspired by the great 17th century scientific reformer and political figure Francis Bacon—another former student of Cambridge—the Philosophical Breakfast Club plotted to bring about a new scientific revolution. And to a remarkable extent, they succeeded, even in ways they never intended. Historian of science and philosopher Laura J. Snyder exposes the political passions, religious impulses, friendships, rivalries, and love of knowledge—and power—that drove these extraordinary men. Whewell (who not only invented the word “scientist,” but also founded the fields of crystallography, mathematical economics, and the science of tides), Babbage (a mathematical genius who invented the modern computer), Herschel (who mapped the skies of the Southern Hemisphere and contributed to the invention of photography), and Jones (a curate who shaped the science of economics) were at the vanguard of the modernization of science. This absorbing narrative of people, science and ideas chronicles the intellectual revolution inaugurated by these men, one that continues to mold our understanding of the world around us and of our place within it. Drawing upon the voluminous correspondence between the four men over the fifty years of their work, Laura J. Snyder shows how friendship worked to spur the men on to greater accomplishments, and how it enabled them to transform science and help create the modern world. "The lives and works of these men come across as fit for Masterpiece Theatre.” —Wall Street Journal "Snyder succeeds famously in evoking the excitement, variety and wide-open sense of possibility of the scientific life in 19th-century Britain...splendidly evoked in this engaging book.” —American Scientist "This fine book is as wide-ranging and anecdotal, as excited and exciting, as those long-ago Sunday morning conversations at Cambridge. The Philosophical Breakfast Club forms a natural successor to Jenny Uglow’s The Lunar Men...and Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder.” —Washington Post

Imaging a Career in Science

Imaging a Career in Science PDF Author: Marco Beretta
Publisher: Science History Publications
ISBN: 9780881352948
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description